


Every blue shade of green

by miabicicletta



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, F/M, Future Fic, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-05
Updated: 2016-08-05
Packaged: 2018-07-29 14:36:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7688230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miabicicletta/pseuds/miabicicletta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Hello, Molly.”</p><p>She looks into his eyes. Every green shade of blue, those eyes. Fifteen years since she first fell for him. Utterly; irrationally; incompletely, then. So long, and not so long at all. </p><p>“Hello, Sherlock.”</p><p>She falls again. Completely.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Every blue shade of green

**Author's Note:**

> You know my MO by now. Title comes from probably my favorite song of all time, [Go Places](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBo2qEzyHzE). 
> 
> Dedicated to my lovely beta reader [theleftpill](http://theleftpill.tumblr.com), kindest of souls, most brilliant of cheerleaders. Follow her, and adore.

Three years away from London, away from England; away from the Tube and the crowds; the all-night shifts and the autopsies and grieving families; away from the work and the rush of it...Once again she finds herself willingly pulled back in, back under. She suspects it will always be like that.

London. London. Never lets you go. As with so many things.

The presentation goes well enough. The conference is well-planned, the panels are lively. After, she goes to Barts and has coffee in the canteen with Mike, like it is ten years before. Only now everything is different.

_(A lie.)_

_(Not a lie.)_

Mike is so kind and exuberant, which is a joy but also a little bit unbearable. “Christ. We do miss you, Molly,” he says when he’s walked her out to the arcing pavement at West Smithfield. "I know, you've moved on and up, and made your choices, and it's not at all my place to say, but, ah, Molly..."

He looks at her below the unchanged doors that lead to very same hallways. “Nothing is quite the same.”

“Liar,” she says, making light. Forcing a smile.

“On my honor," he replies, hand above his heart.

She walks to Barbican Tube and wonders at his meaning.

 

* * *

 

Greg Lestrade promises to get out to Swiss Cottage for a drink at John and Mary Watson’s, which he does. All smiles to see her, and few pounds heavier, too. He’s been promoted to a position with less footwork, she susses out. That, plus a new girlfriend with long-term potential...She drops a few hints along those lines, and is more than pleased when he confirms both.

They catch up properly. All of them do, alternating between chats and games with Allie Watson, who has grown so much and so quickly. All of four (" _Al_ most five!") she’s her own bright, bubbly personality that is part John, part Mary, part something all her own, and just a smidgen of something else. Something familiar.

“Time for bed, yeah?” John prompts.

“Obviously,” Allison replies, sullen.

Molly laughs. It's easy enough to do. She loves and misses these people. Really and truly, she does, and when she smiles at them, she holds her smile tight and pretends it is all okay.

(That bit is far more difficult.)

“So. Lovey, c’mon, now,” Mary sighs, handing her another glass of wine. “Tell us everything.”

Molly flips through photos on her tablet, shows them her little house in the Outer Sunset. Tells them about the fog-shrouded hills, about the wild jasmine and the eucalyptus that grow in her yard.

And, of course: _Him_.

The boy she fell in love with the year after everything with Sherlock ended. The one she met at her lowest, still wounded and grieving the demise of the relationship she’d come to understand was, and forever would be, the most (wondrous, agonizing, astounding) significant bond of her entire life. And one neither of them could bear to be part of any longer.

In the photo, he and Molly smile from high above San Francisco, his chin perched on her shoulder, her arm around his waist. Molly Hooper has never thought of herself as a woman who needed saving. But oh, the parts of her life she has recovered, what she has mended...What she has made _so much more_ because of him.

John looks away. His jaw clenches. He shakes his head once, twice, then rises. He leaves the room without saying so much as a word. Greg gives her an apologetic look. He disappears after John, the stairs groaning above before a door closes, cutting them off.

Molly’s heart sinks. Her face flushes. She sets her tablet down, knowing the facade is shattered. “He’s still angry.” Part of her understands. Part of her rebels. The same part of her that feels John never forgave her for knowing what he did not, years before, when she helped Sherlock die. “At me. _Me_.”

“No,” Mary sighs. She stands, collecting plates. “He’s not angry. He’s…” She stands at the sink and looks Molly in the eye. “He’s heartbroken. For both of you.” She looks away. “Both of us are.”

Molly tuts.

“We’ve missed you,” Mary says, reaching out, squeezing her hand.

The kitchen is hot. Her face burns. “I couldn’t watch him do it again. You know that.”

“I know.”

“I saw it before. Before John. And then, for all that time, all the lying…” She shook her head. “I could put up with so much but…not that.”

“He did it though.” Mary looks at her full on, without backing off. Not letting her off the hook. “He got clean. Too long after he should have, maybe, but, Molly. He did it.”

She balls a fist at the unfairness. At Mary for refusing to let it go, at how tired and unbrave and scared she felt three years before. At how he gave her no other choice. At how much she’s hated herself, and him, for having to make it.

“I’m glad,” Molly replies. She turns back, holding her chin high. “And I’m proud of him.” Because she is. No matter what else, she is that.

Mary shakes her head. Starts to say, “Molly–”

She jumps to her feet. “Thank you,” Molly holds up a hand. “For dinner, and—” Her vision blurs. She presses a hand to the Watson’s marble counter. Looks away. Teeters in her shoes.

Mary’s arms come around her middle. Her head presses close to Molly’s own, and there’s a gasp and a sob in the sound Mary makes before she presses her lips to Molly’s brow.

 _For loving him, too_ , Molly cannot say. _And me_ , she thinks. _And me._

“—for everything,” she finishes when aches have left their throats.

Mary’s features soften. “Always. Always.”

 

* * *

 

The sky is flat, gray. London. She stands under the lamp and catches her breath.

“Bad dinner, was it?”

Her breath hitches, but not in fear. Wouldn’t it have come to this? Daring to cross an ocean and continent after the swell of time, even if he only crossed a city he’d met her partway.

The corner of her mouth rises. “Mary still can’t cook to save her life.”

“I keep pointing that out.”

“Probably shouldn’t.”

“She keeps pointing _that_ out.”

They look at one another, studying openly. He is older, but hardly so. Some more lines at his eyes. Some gray in his hair. It looks marvelous. She takes a long breath. He steps forward. Her heart skips.

“Hello, Molly.”

She looks into his eyes. Every green shade of blue, those eyes. Fifteen years since she first fell for him. Utterly; hopelessly; incompletely, then. So long, and not so long at all.

“Hello, Sherlock.”

She falls again. Utterly. Hopelessly. Completely.

 

* * *

 

After, she is calm, clear-headed. She has been here before.

There will be tears, of course, but they will come later. After she has dressed and left 221B Baker Street, as she has so many times. And, when she once more finds herself the architect of her own grief, she’ll ask the eternal question. _Molly Hooper, don’t you ever learn?_

She pulls back the duvet, swings her feet to the coolness of the floor.

Unexpected, the electricity of his touch. His fingertips skate her spine. “Don’t.” A hitch in his voice. So rare. So rare and precious a thing. “Molly. Don't.” 

She half turns her head over her shoulder, not meeting his eyes. “You know. You _know_ I can’t.”

He sits up. “Please.”

She folds in, accuses. “He’s waiting. At home. _Our_ home, Sherlock. The one I made there, with him.”

His hand falls away. His jaw tightens. “You never…”

Regret floods in. _I know. But…_ She shrugs, meets his eye. “Neither did you.”

 

* * *

 

She leaves.

She leaves Baker Street, and for five thousand miles across the whole of the Western Hemisphere, more than the tobacco and bergamot taste of him that lingers on her lips; more than the lean muscled, scar tissue ghost of his skin on hers; more than the dark well of his voice so deep she feels him as much as she hears...more than all those things, she is haunted by the photograph, half-obscured on the bookshelf beside a field guide of North American wildflowers and a human skull. A photograph of a smiling woman with long hair, brown eyes, a face bright with joy.

She knows that face. Just as she knows the smile on it that used to be hers.

 

* * *

 

Meena meets her at the airport. He is with her. Of course he is.

With his arms around her, a sense of calm and peace and clarity settles. Molly smiles, and some of the emotional weight loosens, falls away. These arms are full of miracles.

Though her heart may be in London, he was, and would always be, _home_.

 

* * *

 

“You were right.”

She whirls around. Fog and jasmine. Tobacco and bergamot.

“I didn’t tell you that I went to rehab,” Sherlock begins. “And I didn’t come after you when I got clean, because I thought you deserved more. Deserved better. I am sorry. Molly, I’m a fool in many ways, but you seem to be the only person who truly reduces me to foolishness.” He swallows. “I should have.”

Shock is a woolly cotton clamped on her tongue.

“This time I will. I _am_. Molly,” he says, so close. “For you, I have to try.”

She dares not believe him. Not yet. “And him?”

“He,” Sherlock swears. “Is why I _must_. Why I’ve done all this.” His mouth curves upward and his eyes dance over hers. Her stomach and heart and breath catch all at once. God, she has missed that strange and playful arc. “He’s had your uncontested company too long, Molly.”

Footsteps.

 _His_ footsteps.

She turns to him, his expression confused. “Mummy?”

Sherlock bends down, and looks to his son. “Hello.”

“Ben,” Molly says. Her voice is thick as her little boy looks at her, his eyes every blue shade of green. She is overcome. “This is your dad," she manages. "Guess what? I think he'd finally like to meet you.”

“Oh,” says Benjamin Hooper. He turns up to Sherlock Holmes. And smiles. “Okay.”

And he did.

 

* * *

 

 _A heart should always go one step too far_  
_Come the morning and the day winding like dreams_  
_Come the morning every blue shade of green_  
_Come with me, go places._  
—The New Pornographers, “Go Places”

**Author's Note:**

> As always, thoughts, feelings, kudos, comments, and constructive criticism are welcome :)


End file.
